Summit School & Jacoby Church
Wythougan Valley Preservation Council, Marshall County’s county-wide preservation organization, is quickly approaching its silver anniversary in 2024. In this column, I wanted to highlight two of our biggest preservation projects, working in conjunction with the Tippecanoe and Center Township Trustees and Advisory Boards. From time to time, Wythougan has hosted concerts, lectures, and other events including weddings at the two buildings that rank as the oldest public buildings in the county. Both, with their cemeteries, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Summit Chapel-school, on Highway 10 in Tippecanoe Township, was constructed about 1860-1865 on a site given to the township by a local pioneer farming family for use as a school, church, and cemetery in 1842. A log structure served as the original school, being built in 1855, but it suffered a fire and was replaced by the current building. The Summit Methodist Episcopal congrega- tion used the building until they erected a separate church on the south side of the road in 1892. The congregation continued to use the building for dinners and preparation of flowers for decorating graves. A cloakroom was added to the front of the building in about 1915 and the bell tower which summoned children to school was removed in the following decades.
1928 ushered in the final year for operating the building as Summit School. Consolidation moved children to Tippecanoe into a unified building for the township. The building continued to serve the Methodist congregation and also as a precinct polling station for the township until the early 1960s. Wythougan Valley Preservation Council executed a long-term lease with the township in order to restore the building and to use it for educational programs in 2001.
Jacoby Church, on King Road in Center Township, was organized by the Jacoby families who settled in Marshall County in 1847 and were of German descent. The cemetery was laid out in 1850 by farmer John Jacoby when his daughter, Catherine, died of typhoid fever and there were no established cemeteries in the area in which to bury her. His little girl’s grave was the first one that was dug on April 25, 1850. On November 18, 1850, Jacoby, and his wife, Elizabeth, deeded the one acre parcel to the German Reformed Church that same year for the purposes of a cemetery, church, and school. The 1860 Greek Revival church building was originally built by John Fesser. The Plymouth Democrat on May 23, 1861 reported that the German Reformed Church situated 3 miles east of Plymouth in the Jacoby neighborhood will be dedicated June 9, 1861. The Jacoby family were prominent members of the agricultural, political and religious communities of Marshall County. John Jacoby was also the founder of St. John’s Reformed Church. The foyer and bell tower were added during a remodeling project in about 1904 with a late Gothic Revival belfry.
On June 29, 1958, the Jacoby church reopened after being closed for many years by the congregation that would later build Sunrise Chapel. They held their services there until April 26, 1964 when their new church was constructed on Lincoln Highway east of Plymouth. Iris Price, a Jacoby descendant, coordinated repairs and maintenance for the structure and cemetery for many years after. Between 2006 and 2008, Wythougan Valley Preservation Council coordinated substantial restoration work on the building and held a rededication marking its 150th anniversary in 2011.